A year ago Nintendo apologized for the state of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet and promised that they were working on improvements. Did they lie?

[HylianSeven]

They didn't technically "lie" I guess, as there were some legitimate bug fixes and improvements. However the game runs just as bad as at launch, if not worse. The DLC maps run even worse.

In the spirit of it though I think they really didn't do enough. The frame rate is atrocious to this day. The game is fun, but it's also a 5/10 experience.

I don't expect this to get any better on the next gen Nintendo platform either. They'll probably have to push things further into another game that's plagued with issues at launch and persist through multiple patches.

I will never understand how we can't expect better of the company developing the mainline games of the #1 media IP on the planet. Sure "they have no reason to" because the games sell, but I reasonably expect they could strive for better. I don't think that's too much to ask. The games absolutely do not have to be super fancy graphics running at 4k 120FPS or whatever, or even have the "Nintendo hire this man" energy. Like what we have but a little better would suffice. I expect Pokemon's visuals to be carried by it's art anyway.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs honestly.

 

[Serebii]

Between BDSP's awful chibi style and S/V's performance issues, it's clear that it doesn't matter.

The next games could go back to sprites and they'd still sell tens of millions.

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Don't be so sure. Pokémon isn't a guarantee of success and BDSP's legs fell HARD

 

[Cronogear]

Wonder why they keep pushing for these open world experiences that the platform can't handle instead of a more traditional experience polished to a mirror sheen, with fantastic 2D art and animation?

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Open worlds are the big trend of the industry. 2D is not. And the platform certainly can handle open worlds (BotW, TotK, and the Xenoblades not only look a full generation ahead of SV in terms of visuals, they also run significantly better), but Game Freak clearly did not have the technical knowledge to pull it off. And frankly, I don't think their management really cares about that, as long as deadlines are met and costs are kept relatively low.

 

[Ushojax]

I see quotes like this all the time regarding Game Freak. They're in charge of one of the best selling game franchises there is, bringing in a HUGE amount of money with each release. Is there a reason why they're not a larger team with the capability to attract high level talent?
I get the answer is probably going to be a variation of "the games keep selling despite the technical issues, so why would they look to invest and improve?", it just seems so silly to me that one of the biggest franchises in gaming has recently released in such shoddy states and that people keep making this excuse for it.
If an EA or Ubisoft pulled this sort of thing they'd be raked over the coals for it. Game Freak and Nintendo seem to get a pass of sorts (despite the vocal criticism they get, there is just as vocal a defence).

Wonder why they keep pushing for these open world experiences that the platform can't handle instead of a more traditional experience polished to a mirror sheen, with fantastic 2D art and animation?

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I'm not making excuses for them. It's pathetic that they are willing to sell such a shoddy product.

I just know what to expect from Game Freak at this point. The priority for TPC is to release games according to their merchandising schedule and Game Freak don't seem willing or able to push back on that. The games they release are of the expected standard for a team that is decades behind the tech curve and under tremendous time pressure. They are basically having to speed run the painful transition to HD that most developers went through 20 years ago while Game Freak was still working with the GBA. While other studios were prepping for the PS5, they were releasing 3DS games at 240p.

 

[Serebii]

I'm not making excuses for them. It's pathetic that they are willing to sell such a shoddy product.

I just know what to expect from Game Freak at this point. The priority for TPC is to release games according to their merchandising schedule and Game Freak don't seem willing or able to push back on that. The games they release are of the expected standard for a team that is decades behind the tech curve and under tremendous time pressure. They are basically having to speed run the painful transition to HD that most developers went through 20 years ago while Game Freak was still working with the GBA. While other studios were prepping for the PS5, they were releasing 3DS games at 240p.

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Ok this isn't true

Game Freak sets their timeframe and TPC work to that. TPC don't mandate stuff to them. While TPC does work as producers, they do NOT dictate Game Freak's schedule. TPC works the rest of the franchise to the plan

 

[ROMASS]

They promised?
I don't see any pinky swear.

 

[Trakan]

Don't be so sure. Pokémon isn't a guarantee of success and BDSP's legs fell HARD

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BDSP sold incredibly for a pretty barebones remake. S/V barely runs.

Gen 10 will have brand new Pokemon to back it up. It doesn't matter what art style it goes with, what performance issues it has, or if it's open world or not. It will probably break records regardless.

 

[Kirbivore]

Frame rate has been improved to a solid 22-27fps. It used to bottom out way lower. For a turn based game like Pokemon frame rate isn't really important.

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I don't really agree in Pokemon's case. They made efforts to speed up things like capture speed and the likes, but because everything us tied to the framerate in comparison to say, Age of Calamity, everything ends up taking longer and made those upgrades pointless.

 

[Devilgunman]

I don't care if they "lie" or not. The fact is, game still runs like shit and it's bummer. But they don't care anyway since people keep buying it.

 

[Nugnip]

They said they were working on it in that quote. Don't see a commitment to any release. So not a lie.

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[Serebii]

S/V barely runs.

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Hyperbole doesn't make for good discussion

Gen 10 will have brand new Pokemon to back it up. It doesn't matter what art style it goes with, what performance issues it has, or if it's open world or not. It will probably break records regardless.

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Perhaps, but as I said, Pokémon isn't guaranteed success.

 

[Fatmanp]

Do we have any idea what the budgets are for these games? What are the odds that in comparison to their budgets they are the most profitable games that get made these days?

 

[Alent]

They fixed all the funny bugs, the frame rate is just still arse. It was a rough period between BDSP and SV bugs, but we got some funny stuff out of it.

 

[N1corex]

well they did improve it to some extent but its not where I would like it to be lol.
so I dont think it was a lie. but some issues clearly were not fixable for them.

 

[CerealKi11a]

Absolutely. The DLC somehow is technically worse than the base game. The frame hitches are near constant in the open field.

 

[Joe]

They definitely made some fixes, so I guess they get the "technically correct" thing. But yeah, it's still not ideal. The game is fun as hell when it's running well. It's a shame.

 

[Slime Time Live]

Minor improvements were made, though not to the extent I expected. An acknowledgment like that should've yielded more serious improvements. What we saw was modest at best. It's disappointing.

 

[Rockets]

Nintendo probably wanted the game to be fixed, but they made a promise they're not in a position to make. Keep in mind, Gamefreak never promised or said anything at the time.

Also, the sentiment at the time was that performance as a whole would and should get fixed, not just some of the graphical glitches and crashes. Some of those glitches and crashes were eliminated. But the performance is still terrible. The only noteworthy performance change I can think of is box loading being fixed.

 

[Bard]

Perhaps, but as I said, Pokémon isn't guaranteed success.

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This is just being disingenuous at this point. The mainline games are still selling tens of millions of copies despite all of their technical issues, and please don't pull out the "well actually the spin offs don't sell that well", clearly talking about the mainline games with this discussion.

 

[Serebii]

This is just being disingenuous at this point. The mainline games are still selling tens of millions of copies despite all of their technical issues, and please don't pull out the "well actually the spin offs don't sell that well", clearly talking about the mainline games with this discussion.

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Could it be that they're selling well because people don't care about technical issues as much as people on Resetera and Twitter? Outside the hardcore gamingsphere, reception for SV is positive

 

[Trakan]

Hyperbole doesn't make for good discussion

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I don't think I have had a single play session of these games no matter how long or short where something doesn't go wrong and everything is working as intended whether it be bug related, performance related, or whatever.

You know what hurts discussion? Ignoring the issues, handwaving them away, and making excuses.

 

[Landy828]

The base game slowdowns and problems definitely seemed to have been fixed after the patch went out. In the very least they happened less frequently. However, I had a major slowdown in December so:


View: https://x.com/SpyroFlame/status/1601767063760302081?s=20


The DLC though, there's been quite a few slowdowns in some areas (especially those that are foliage heavy like some corners of Kitakami and ironically, one section of the Savanna Biome in the Terarrium)

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There's literally nothing happening on the screen and that slow down is insane. Same with the loading/LOD problems. Would drive me nuts, lol.

 

[Cronogear]

Don't be so sure. Pokémon isn't a guarantee of success and BDSP's legs fell HARD

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BDSP is also an extremely simple and barebones remake that was not particularly well received, and also got kneecapped by Legends Arceus releasing two months later.

It still sold over 15 million copies.

I do agree that Pokemon as a brand is not a guarantee of a successful game, but it's clear that the mainline Pokemon formula certainly is.

 

[mrmickfran]

Imagine if they let it cook and it came out last month 😩

 

[Yoshimitsu126]

Excited to see how the next one looks in two years.

 

[Soulsis]

Honestly I think it's deceptive to show multiple trailers of gameplay looking smooth when the actual game is broken. So they've been lying from the very first reveal honestly. While they didn't explicitly say they were fixing the bugs, they knew their tweet was going to be construed that way and they still had the nerve to release two rounds of paid DLC without any actual fixes to the core game. So yeah, lies

 

[Bard]

Could it be that they're selling well because people don't care about technical issues as much as people on Resetera and Twitter? Outside the hardcore gamingsphere, reception for SV is positive

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Sure and why do you think people are willing to look past it if not for brand appeal at the very least? Do you think that if the games didn't have the Pokemon name attached to them they still would have sold as much as they did? Is the brand the only reason for it? No, but what remains is that the way these games run for an IP as successful as this one is flat out embarrassing.

So my questions to you is why do you think the games are in this state? There are other similarly large games on the Switch that don't have even half the problems these do and with lower budgets and resources. Did gamefreak just not give themselves enough time for development? Why not? Clearly they were aware of these ongoing issues during development of the games and the DLC but as others have said Nintendo is the one that put out that statement not Gamefreak, why didn't they make a statement on it? Do they not have the technical knowhow for a game with this scope? There's a lot here that's bizarre about these releases but at the end it doesn't matter because they sold so well what motivation does Gamefreak have to actually try to address some of these issues?

 

[Nocturnowl]

The following tale of improvements is true. By true I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies and in the end, isn't that the truth?

The answer is no.

 

[Ushojax]

Ok this isn't true

Game Freak sets their timeframe and TPC work to that. TPC don't mandate stuff to them. While TPC does work as producers, they do NOT dictate Game Freak's schedule. TPC works the rest of the franchise to the plan

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Let's hope then that GF put their foot down and insist that they take far more time with the next games, even if it means disrupting the release of all the ancillary products. The series deserves so much better.

Hyperbole doesn't make for good discussion

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It's not hyperbole, the games are in a totally unacceptable state. Compare them to any other AAA Nintendo release and it's clear. Most environments are hideous, the general frame rate is inconsistent, major issues with LOD, can't handle animation on distant NPCs/objects, lags in menus, crashes when playing online, the list is endless. Nintendo would never put out a Mario, Zelda, Metroid game etc with this many problems because they have full control over those IPs (and don't have trading cards to sell).

 

[Cudpug]

Serious question requesting a serious answer- why do Game Freak seem to struggle to make video games? These games don't seem particularly technically demanding but it seems like even looking as bad as they do they don't run well, which is odd on a system that can run TotK, Skyrim, Witcher etc.

I don't want to simplify it as "they suck" but I'm genuinely curious as to what the issue could be, as the performance is pretty embarrassing at this stage.

 

[Ushojax]

Serious question requesting a serious answer- why do Game Freak seem to struggle to make video games? These games don't seem particularly technically demanding but it seems like even looking as bad as they do they don't run well, which is odd on a system that can run TotK, Skyrim, Witcher etc.

I don't want to simplify it as "they suck" but I'm genuinely curious as to what the issue could be, as the performance is pretty embarrassing at this stage.

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In 2017 they were still making games that ran at 240p. The rest of the videogame world has been working in HD for 20 years.

 

[.exe]

Played through the game a few months ago and it still seemed held together by spit and tape. The memory leak remains, never mind the constant clipping, glitchy menus and cinematic frame rate. They patched it a few times, so I guess they worked on some improvements. It plays and it's not altogether broken (though it did freeze on me once), but it's still a laughable, minimum viable-looking release for Nintendo and GF/TPC.

 

[Zafir]

Wonder why they keep pushing for these open world experiences that the platform can't handle instead of a more traditional experience polished to a mirror sheen, with fantastic 2D art and animation?

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Why do people keep suggesting the platform can't handle it? We've literally had BotW/TotK and Xenoblade 3 showing us that open world games are truly not impossible to do on the Switch. Hell, we've even got ports managing it, I remember playing Skyrim and it ran perfectly fine. It's just game freak don't care enough to devote the time or money into improving their games. They'd rather priotise keeping up their schedule.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

Serious question requesting a serious answer- why do Game Freak seem to struggle to make video games? These games don't seem particularly technically demanding but it seems like even looking as bad as they do they don't run well, which is odd on a system that can run TotK, Skyrim, Witcher etc.

I don't want to simplify it as "they suck" but I'm genuinely curious as to what the issue could be, as the performance is pretty embarrassing at this stage.

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They had to jump from handheld gaming to HD gaming in a span of several years. Their HD output hasnt held up too well so far, but they're slowly improving.

 

[N1corex]

Serious question requesting a serious answer- why do Game Freak seem to struggle to make video games? These games don't seem particularly technically demanding but it seems like even looking as bad as they do they don't run well, which is odd on a system that can run TotK, Skyrim, Witcher etc.

I don't want to simplify it as "they suck" but I'm genuinely curious as to what the issue could be, as the performance is pretty embarrassing at this stage.

Click to shrink...

ill give u my observational answer game freak seems to build games the old way of doing things they have always seemed to do this idk if they are unaware of dev shortcuts to do things but they will just load everything into memory maybe they do need help. I think they are doing their best and its just not up to industry standard expectations. they have always been a handheld dev with limited hardware limitation, sub sd resolutions now they are being asked to make home console games at high resolution. its a big step in many aspects for the team. tight knit structure to uncharted territory. Nintendo needs to realize that they need help to some extent.

 

[Kratos2098]

Until they prove otherwise yes they did lie. If something is broken and I tell you I'm going to fix it and a year goes by without me doing it then I expect you to think I'm lying too.

 

[BearBobomb]

I like how the title says they promised to fix performance issues and uses a tweet where they procced to not promise to fix performance issues

 

[t67443]

Some of the technical issues were fixed but a lot of the graphical issues people expected them to solve were probably never on the list of issues at Game Freak to begin with.

My thought is Game Freak doesn't think their stuff is as broken as we think.

 

[PucePikmin]

It's still the same game, the most egregious un-Nintendo-like bugs have just been patched. Game Freak's engine sucks and there's no fixing it.

 

[808s & Villainy]

Game Freak and Nintendo seem to get a pass of sorts (despite the vocal criticism they get, there is just as vocal a defence).

Wonder why they keep pushing for these open world experiences that the platform can't handle instead of a more traditional experience polished to a mirror sheen, with fantastic 2D art and animation?

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Pokemon isn't a Nintendo developed game. They co-own the IP and handle distribution.

And the platform has nothing to do with it, and they had games with performance problems even when the games were 2D. Y'all need to stop acting like HW is holding back Pokemon. Maybe that was the case when they were still on Gameboys, but that was decades ago at this point

 

[Angie]

Why do you think Disney doesn't do 2D animation anymore?

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There are a lot of reasons for that, but none because there is no audience for it.


Mostly because is far more expensive to animate a movie with hand-drawn 2D animatio. It requires huge teams of animators and a lot of the time to do it.
It was also because of the huge sucess that Pixar had with computer-animation. That made the process cheaper and more flexible for later changes to make.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

As much as I deeply deeply desire to see a 2D mainline game again, it will never happen, the genie won't go back in the bottle after a decade of 3D development. The solution is slow stuff down for Gen 10 and figure out a new development strategy that allows for better QA and optimization. We can take a break year, we don't need Pokemon to come out so frequently.

 

[dennett316]

Why do people keep suggesting the platform can't handle it? We've literally had BotW/TotK and Xenoblade 3 showing us that open world games are truly not impossible to do on the Switch. Hell, we've even got ports managing it, I remember playing Skyrim and it ran perfectly fine. It's just game freak don't care enough to devote the time or money into improving their games. They'd rather priotise keeping up their schedule.

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Yeah, I wrote that first comment without re-reading it to check for things like making sense. I even said in a follow up comment that BOTW and TOTK exist and run better, so no idea why I said the platform can't handle it. Obviously Game Freak don't have the time or skill to pull it off better. Both problems can be solved by spending a bit more money and hiring more experienced people to put the games together on their schedule.

 

[RedSwirl]

Wonder why they keep pushing for these open world experiences that the platform can't handle instead of a more traditional experience polished to a mirror sheen, with fantastic 2D art and animation?

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Because 3D open-world Pokémon on a console has been the eternal dream of fans since Red & Blue. Now we know why Game Freak took so long to even attempt it.

Open worlds are the big trend of the industry. 2D is not. And the platform certainly can handle open worlds (BotW, TotK, and the Xenoblades not only look a full generation ahead of SV in terms of visuals, they also run significantly better), but Game Freak clearly did not have the technical knowledge to pull it off. And frankly, I don't think their management really cares about that, as long as deadlines are met and costs are kept relatively low.

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Yo-Kai Watch 4 is basically what this game should've looked like.


View: https://youtu.be/z5qPmHYX4Fo

In 2017 they were still making games that ran at 240p. The rest of the videogame world has been working in HD for 20 years.

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If you look through their development history, they didn't have to start making actual 3D games until the last few years.

 

[Calamari41]

I bought Scarlet for my son for Christmas as his first Pokémon game, and thankfully he doesn't care about graphics. But holy hell, I'm sitting there watching this just absolutely aghast, lol. This is one ugly game. Like he just caught a Pokémon this morning and the pokeball did it's capture animation fifteen feet in the air while the texture resolution of the environment dropped to like 480p

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

They didn't lie.

They never promised to fix everything, just to make an effort to implement fixes and make improvements. And they did that, just not everything.

What the problem is is that they are continuing to fall short of consumer expectations by not fixing every major issue, not that they lied a year ago. I would argue the performance issues continue to be an obvious and entirely unavoidable part of the S/V experience which is why it is so disappointing.

(And I say all this having included Scarlet in my top 10 last year -- I did actually enjoy the game that's underneath the issues, but the most obvious issues that I encountered -- i.e. performance -- still exist today, if not worse in some spots)

 

[SanTheSly]

They made some improvements and then failed to continue to improve it to a reasonable standard, whilst selling you ridiculously expensive DLC that runs even worse.

Vote with your wallet, or at least wait for reviews and performance impressions with all future games tbh. Only thing for it. Until they've shown that they actually care to put a fully functional product with some level of quality control out on day 1 again, there's no need to buy these games on launch, or preorder.

 

[Clefargle]

Pokemon fans should apologize for enabling Game Freak

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Yes

 

[oliverandm]

Bought the game on sale the other day. Had a good time with Omega Ruby, which I hadn't bought at launch (and prior to that my last Pokémon game was X&Y). I laughed out loud when I began playing. The utter mess it is. The state these games come in is utterly absurd, and nobody was lying when they said the technical issues are insane for a game like this; the amount of money it brings in, and then this is something they deliver in good conscious. So anti-consumer.

 

[Dice]

Pokemon fans should apologize for enabling Game Freak

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Seriously. Itsawful they're at that "too big to fail" point.

But like they let Zelda TOTK cook for a full extra year.... Pokemon fans deserve that. I dream of a high polished current gen pokemon game like that